XMPP

You can join us on

• khaganat@chat.khaganat.net : the general room for the project.
• khanat@chat.khaganat.net : for talks about the universe, roleplay.
• krypte@chat.khaganat.net : for technical talks.

These rooms are logged and the logs are freely accessible, as for IRC in the past, for 7 days. As a bonus, when logging in, you'll get the last messages¹⁾, which allows to keep up with the current talk.

You just have to click on the above links to join a webchat: it runs in your browser, no need for a software or registration, just choose a nickname before talking.

A webchat is nice, because it's simple.

You just have to click here, enter a nickname, and here you go!

Caution:

• Your nickname is neither saved nor registered, the only way to protect it is to create an XMPP account.
• A webchat is handy to discover or for a quick talk, but you won't have as many features as with a heavy client. Though… the XMPP webchat engines are improving; with movim.eu for example, you can access a very complete tool (but maybe somewhat hard to use for a beginner).
• You can log with your XMPP account into a webchat. There are several ways, for example https://jabberfr.org/converse/ or https://movim.jabberfr.org/. It will automatically retrieve your contacts, your preferred rooms, and so on.

A heavy client may be useful. But it's not as true as with IRC.

With XMPP, there are several interesting features, especially the ability to log in from various clients with the same account… hence following a talk from your PC, then your smartphone, then your browser, but still keeping the whole talk in history and receiving the messages sent to you while changing from one device to another. Incredible, isn't it ?

Depending on what you prefer and your devices, there is a tremendous choice of clients. We can propose you three picks to start: webchat, Gajim (desktop client), and if you prefer to use a console to access chats, Poezio. For anything else, let's join JabberFR, that's where you'll find the best french documentation²⁾.

It's better to create an XMPP account to use these clients: the anonymous authentication is working more or less with them. The process is described in the article about Gajim.

How to start with Gajim(fr)? Follow the instructions in the dedicated guide(fr)! How to start with Poezio(fr)? Follow the other guide!

You'll find a list of XMPP clients here.

• Conversations is very good. It's opensource, but paying on Google Play, free if you're using F-droid or if you compile it yourself³⁾. It's the most user-friendly and simplest XMPP client that we tested, ideal to start with.

• Gajim is well maintained, quite easy to take over and with all the useful features. It can be found in all major distributions. It's the one we recommend to start with and the one with which we can help you.
• Poezio is an excellent client but only for an informed audience (console interface, not always packaged for your distro). It's the one to advise to people who know and like Weechat or irssi. Moreover, it's maintained by Link Mauve (who's also involved in the Khaganat project), so you'll be able to talk directly with one of the devs!
• Dino is a client which aims to be simple and user-friendly. At the time of our tests, it was still lacking maturity, which caused regular crashes and strange behaviour.
• Pidgin is interesting because it allows to log in to several networks (IRC, XMPP). But the XMPP part is suffering from numerous delays and that causes problematic behaviour sometimes.

• Gajim is also available on Windows, in a flavor quite similar to the Linux one.

We have no feedback from Mac users, we're waiting for yours!

You can anonymously use XMPP without the need for an account. It's a convenient way to get started, but there are some limitations:

• you'll not have access to some services that need persistence, like letting other people leave you messages while you're offline.
• anonymous accounts may be used by spammers, stalkers, or for offense and so are disabled on most XMPP chat rooms. For the moment we have them enabled but in case of problems they may be disabled for a while.

XMPP can be used with or without an account, be it on a web- or a desktop-client. You'll always have the most functionality when you're connected with an account.

The easiest way to go is to use the webchat, you'll be in an anonymous session. Some other services offer by default an anonymous session, like does https://meet.jabberfr.org/Khaganat.

You also can connect anonymously with a desktop client. The condition being that the server you're connecting to accepts anonymous accounts. Poezio offers a server by default. With Gajim you'll have to specify one ; JabberFR suggests anon.jabberfr.org. You just have to check the option “anonymous authentication” when creating an “account” on the client : locally a profile is created but it's not really an XMPP account.

Please note that you'll not be able to connect everywhere : as stated above, some servers reject anonymous connections or are blocking some “anon” server that are or have been spamming.es de spam.

This is as simple as choosing a XMPP server that allows online registration. We have a partnership with jabberfr.org and we recommend them you to. They took over APINC domain names, what allows you to have choice in userID:

• https://im.apinc.org/inscription/

For now we have less bots than we had in IRC.

Pendorid is still here. She logs, retrieves RSS feeds, and speaks: all that we need. She's based on Botlogmauve, a homemade bot.

Because selfhosting is good!

More at xmpp_server(fr).